Germans enter the Crimea

On 19 April 1918 German troops forced the Perekop Isthmus, the only land route from the mainland into the Crimea. According to Russian and Ukrainian works the attack began at dawn on 18 April. The infantry of the German 217th Division and Bavarian cavalry took Perekop in the evening after fierce fighting, and the next day, after another fight, Armyansk, beyond which the road into the interior of the peninsula lay open. The operation was directed by General Robert Kosch, commander of General Command 52, a corps that had fought in Romania since 1916 and in the spring of 1918 had taken part in the occupation of Ukraine.

The Crimea outside Ukraine

The Bolsheviks had ruled the peninsula since January 1918. They had crushed the Crimean People’s Republic proclaimed by the Tatars in December 1917, and had murdered its leader Noman Çelebicihan in Sevastopol in February. In March they proclaimed the Taurida Soviet Socialist Republic. The peninsula’s chief asset was Sevastopol, the base of the Black Sea Fleet, where the dreadnoughts, cruisers, destroyers and submarines of the former Russian navy lay. After the capture of Odessa the authorities of the Odessa Soviet Republic had also taken refuge there.

The Crimea did not belong to Ukraine within the meaning of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Ukraine, and Soviet Russia had not renounced it in the treaty of 3 March. The German command, however, had no intention of leaving the fleet in Bolshevik hands. Units of Kosch’s corps, including the 15th Landwehr Division and the 212th Infantry Division, took up positions at Perekop, while from the north-east, through Aleksandrovsk (today Zaporizhzhia) and Melitopol, Colonel Petro Bolbochan’s Ukrainian Crimean Group of the Zaporozhian Corps was approaching. The government of the Ukrainian People’s Republic had secretly instructed him to reach Sevastopol before the Germans and take over the fleet for Ukraine.

The race to Sevastopol

According to Ukrainian works, Bolbochan met Kosch before the attack, and Kosch informed him of the German plans and offered help. The Ukrainian colonel refused it. On 18 April his units took Melitopol after a fight, and on the night before 22 April they crossed the mined railway bridge over the Syvash on handcars, bypassing the Perekop fortifications. On the evening of the same day they took the railway junction at Dzhankoy, and on the morning of 24 April Simferopol. German sources state that their troops had entered Simferopol without a fight as early as 22 April. Bolshevik rule was falling apart. In the mountains and on the coast an uprising of the Crimean Tatars broke out, and at the end of April they captured and shot some of the leaders of the Soviet republic near Alushta.

The allies quickly became rivals. On 26 April Kosch demanded that the Ukrainians lay down their arms and leave the peninsula, since the Crimea was not part of Ukraine. The government in Kiev denied having sent any troops there at all, and on 27 April ordered Bolbochan to withdraw. On 29 April the fleet at Sevastopol hoisted Ukrainian flags, hoping in this way to avoid being taken over by the Germans. It was to no avail. On the night before 30 April some of the ships sailed for Novorossiysk, and on 1 May the Germans entered Sevastopol and took over the remaining vessels.

German Crimea

On 1 May Kosch became commander of all German troops in Taurida and the Crimea. The peninsula came under German military administration, and Ludendorff spun plans to make it a German settlement colony and a springboard to the Caucasus. The question of the fleet that had escaped to Novorossiysk became a source of tension between Berlin and Moscow. Ukraine, which had counted on the Crimea and the fleet, was left with nothing. The expedition to the Crimea showed that the Central Powers treated Ukraine not as an ally but as territory that they administered according to their own needs.